That's kind of what we're observing, though. You would think that the difference in follower counts was negligible in that interaction but you dunking on another account above you is also part of the intended use, which is probably why you got to ratio them. If you hadn't contributed a dunk-reply it probably wouldn't have gotten the same kind of attention.
I think you should look a little closer here at what happens here at fedi. Our conversation for example is kind of how positive and pattern forming types of long discussions go. We're not going to get retweeted and anybody else who might have been reading probably dropped off a few replies back. But we're still talking and I can tell we're actually reading each other's replies so something is going correct. Not algorithm-explosive but definitely positive. Also your post is at positive score now with lots of thoughtful people in here.
Keep observing, things don't go loud here but being viral obviously kind of sucked on twitter and got co-opted on reddit. So it's obviously not all it's hyped up to be. There's an actual beefing comm to but that's also low-key, the stakes are just the various comm operators banning each other from their own various little islands. It's riveting stuff